ARA. 563 
As an order the Parrots form a very compact and isolated group with no outlying 
members leading to other orders. The Striges and Accipitres are considered by some 
to be the most nearly allied birds, but the affinity cannot be close nor are these two 
orders at all nearly related to one another. 
Fam. PSITTACIDA. 
The Psittacidee, which, as we have already said, is the only one of the six families 
which here concerns us, belongs to Count Salvadori’s second division of the order, in 
which the maxilla has towards the end of the palate two series of ridges more or less 
transverse or oblique, producing a file-like surface, the tongue is simple without fringe, 
the sternum complete with a well-defined keel, the orbital ring is mostly incomplete, 
but, if complete, without a process bridging the temporal fossa. 
Subfam. CONURINE. 
Conurine, Salvadori, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. xx. p. 145. 
Tail soft as contrasted with the spiny tail of the Nasiternine. Furcula present 
(except in Psittacula); the left carotid superficial ; orbital ring complete ; tail usually 
long and always cuneate. 
ARA. 
Ara, Cuvier, Lec. d’Anat. Comp. t. ii. (1799) ; Salvadori, Cat. Birds Brit. Mus. xx. p. 150. 
Sittace, Wagler, Mon. Psitt. p. 499 (1830). 
After assigning the three great Blue Macaws to the genus Anodorhynchus, and 
Sittace spiai, Wagl., to Cyanopsittacus, Count Salvadori leaves fifteen species of these 
large Parrots in the genus Ara, its range extending over most of the tropical portion 
of the Neotropical region, with the exception of nearly all the West-Indian islands, 
Cuba alone possessing A. tricolor, a species now nearly, if not quite, extinct. Six 
species are found in Central America and Mexico, three of which only just enter the 
fauna, as far as the Line of the Panama Railway. Of the remaining three, A. macao is 
the only species extending over nearly the whole country as far as Southern Mexico, 
both forms of the great Green Macaws having a more restricted range: one, A. militaris, 
being found chiefly in Western Mexico; the other, A. ambigua, in Nicaragua, Costa 
Rica, and Panama, and thence southwards into Western Ecuador. 
The genus Ara contains birds of very different sizes, ranging from A. ambigua, one 
of the largest of the American Parrots, to A. hahni, a bird less than some members 
of Conurus. 
In Ara, as in all the following genera, the tail is long and cuneate, but the “ orbital 
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